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1 | 1 | # Instructions
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2 | 2 |
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3 |
| -Given a string of digits, calculate the largest product for a contiguous substring of digits of length n. |
| 3 | +Your task is to look for patterns in the long sequence of digits in the encrypted signal. |
4 | 4 |
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5 |
| -For example, for the input `'1027839564'`, the largest product for a series of 3 digits is 270 `(9 * 5 * 6)`, and the largest product for a series of 5 digits is 7560 `(7 * 8 * 3 * 9 * 5)`. |
| 5 | +The technique you're going to use here is called the largest series product. |
6 | 6 |
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7 |
| -Note that these series are only required to occupy *adjacent positions* in the input; the digits need not be *numerically consecutive*. |
| 7 | +Let's define a few terms, first. |
8 | 8 |
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9 |
| -For the input `'73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934'`, |
10 |
| -the largest product for a series of 6 digits is 23520. |
| 9 | +- **input**: the sequence of digits that you need to analyze |
| 10 | +- **series**: a sequence of adjacent digits (those that are next to each other) that is contained within the input |
| 11 | +- **span**: how many digits long each series is |
| 12 | +- **product**: what you get when you multiply numbers together |
11 | 13 |
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12 |
| -For a series of zero digits, the largest product is 1 because 1 is the multiplicative identity. |
13 |
| -(You don't need to know what a multiplicative identity is to solve this problem; |
14 |
| -it just means that multiplying a number by 1 gives you the same number.) |
| 14 | +Let's work through an example, with the input `"63915"`. |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +- To form a series, take adjacent digits in the original input. |
| 17 | +- If you are working with a span of `3`, there will be three possible series: |
| 18 | + - `"639"` |
| 19 | + - `"391"` |
| 20 | + - `"915"` |
| 21 | +- Then we need to calculate the product of each series: |
| 22 | + - The product of the series `"639"` is 162 (`6 × 3 × 9 = 162`) |
| 23 | + - The product of the series `"391"` is 27 (`3 × 9 × 1 = 27`) |
| 24 | + - The product of the series `"915"` is 45 (`9 × 1 × 5 = 45`) |
| 25 | +- 162 is bigger than both 27 and 45, so the largest series product of `"63915"` is from the series `"639"`. |
| 26 | + So the answer is **162**. |
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